kern/96157: Subtle incompatability of FreeBSD and LITE-ON SOHW-1673s drive

[Ronald F.Guilmette]

>Number:         96157
>Category:       kern
>Synopsis:       Subtle incompatability of FreeBSD and LITE-ON SOHW-1673s drive
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       serious
>Priority:       low
>Responsible:    freebsd-bugs
>State:          open
>Quarter:        
>Keywords:       
>Date-Required:
>Class:          sw-bug
>Submitter-Id:   current-users
>Arrival-Date:   Sat Apr 22 04:10:16 GMT 2006
>Closed-Date:
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     Ronald F. Guilmette
>Release:        FreeBSD 4.x/5.x/6.x
>Organization:
Infinite Monkeys & Co. LLC
>Environment:
System: Various 4.x/5.x/6.x

>Description:
	Basically, after much tearing of hair, much gnashing of teeth, and
	much experimentation (e.g. with different DVD-R media, different
	versions of FreeBSD, and different DVD drives) I have, at last,
	determined definitively that the LITE-ON SOHW-1673s DVD/everything
	drive that I bought last year has some very subtle incompatability
	with FreeBSD and/or vise versa.

	For reasons that I cannot possibly fathom, DVD-R disks that are
	_recorded_ on the LITE-ON SOHW-1673s, under essentially any & all
	reasonably recent versions of FreeBSD (4.x/5.x/6.x) are not mountable
	under FreeBSD, even thought they _do_ appear to be fully readable/
	mountable under Windows (ME).

	If you try to mount a DVD-R disk that was burned with the LITE-ON
	SOHW-1673s drive under FreeBSD, you'll get only a cryptic "Input/Output
	error".  (Actually, under FreeBSD 6.x the error message is a little
	less cryptic than that, but it amounts to pretty much the same thing.)

	If you try to mount (under FreeBSD) a DVD-R disk that was burned with
	some _other_ DVD-R drive, and if you use the LITE-ON SOHW-1673s just
	to do the mounting/reading, then there will be no problem.  It appears
	to be only the DVD-R disks that were actually _burned_ with the
	LITE-ON SOHW-1673s that cause problem.  And those burned DVD-R disks
	are un-mountable *either* in the LITE-ON SOHW-1673s itself *or* in
	other drives... well at least in the brand spankin' new NEC ND-3550A
	that I bought to replace the Lite-On.

	The strange thing is that if you burn a DVD-R in the LITE-ON SOHW-1673s
	(under FreeBSD) you _can_ then read/mount that exact same burned DVD-R 
	disk (_and_ on the exact same system) when you boot to, e.g. Windows
	ME.  So you _can_ read the LITE-ON-burned DVD-Rs under Windows, but you
	_cannot_ read the very same DVD-Rs (on the very same system) under
	FreeBSD... no matter what DVD-R drive you use for reading, e.g. the
	Lite-On or something else.

	Basically, I'm just going to trash the Lite-On drive... or sell it on
	eBay... and just chalk this whole mess up to experience.  But before
	I do I wanted to (a) report the problem, so that other people don't
	have to tear their hair out while trying to figure this out, as I
	did, and also (b) I wanted to offer to whoever might care about such
	an obscure little incompatability the opportunity to play with the
	drive awhile before I trash it.

	Does anybody care enough about this obscure, and perhaps now even
	obsolete drive (although the manufacture date on mine is only Feb
	2005, which ain't that old) to want to see if this annoying compata-
	bility nit can be (or should be) fixed?  If so, I'll be happy to
	ship you the drive, you can play with it for a month, and then
	ship it back to me for "eBay disposal".
	
>How-To-Repeat:
	Burn a DVD-R on a Lite-On SOHW-1673s.  Then try to mount the sucker.
	You can't.  You'll get an I/O Error.  This happens on FreeBSD 4.x,
	5.x, and 6.x.

>Fix:
	Input=Newegg, Output=eBay

	Buy a new drive from Newegg.  Sell the SOHW-1673s on eBay.
>Release-Note:
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted: